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The proposals would authorize the use of biometrics “beyond background checks to include identity verification, secure document production, and records management,” the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday. US immigration services already collect fingerprints, photographs, and signatures from people over the age of 14 applying for certain immigration benefits. But under the new rules, they would also be allowed to obtain iris scans, voice prints, palm prints, and photos for facial recognition....

“Call of Duty” trick-shot icon and former FaZe Clan member Carl Reimer pulled the gun, a pistol, during a livestream from his home last night. “Bitch say I ain’t got money,” he said, jokingly, while holding the firearm. Reimer then pulled the trigger and, to his surprise, it fired a round into his desk. “God damn,” Reimer said. “I swear to God I just emptied the mag!” No one was hurt in the incident, aside from a nearby container of Gfuel — a powdered energy drink marketed to gamers — which seems to have taken significant damage....

What’s worrying for anyone who still supports him — and the rest of the world if he’s re-elected — is that Trump’s proclivity for late nights appears to be growing. And it’s both making him angry and affecting his public performance. That’s according to a new analysis of Trump’s social media activity by Columbia University researchers Douglas Almond and Xinming Du, who compared how the president’s late-night tweets with his mood and re-election odds....

Dorsey, a longtime Bitcoin advocate, participated in CoinList’s $10 million funding round, alongside several other investors. CoinList, which helps startups raise money through token sales, will use the cash to build CoinList Trade, a new exchange platform, and a cryptocurrency wallet, the Wall Street Journal reports. This is the first time Dorsey invests in CoinList, which closed a Series B in 2018 from backers including Digital Currency Group and Polychain Capital....

“Approximately 300,000 tweets have been labeled under our Civic Integrity Policy for content that was disputed and potentially misleading,” wrote policy lead Vijaya Gadde and Periscope co-founder Kayvon Beykpour in a blog post. “These represent 0.2% of all US election-related tweets sent during this time period.” The company further disclosed 456 of those tweets were also covered with a warning message in addition to limiting their engagement features. Those likely include a series of tweets from incumbent US President Donald Trump, even though Twitter did not offer any specific examples....

The company is testing an online shopping feature that businesses can use to sell their products through an in-app browser. Up front: Twitter’s “Shop Module” lets companies showcase their products at the top of their profiles. Visitors who have the Shop Module enabled can then tap on items they’re interested in. This will open an in-app browser, where the customer can make a purchase without leaving Twitter. The pilot will begin with a “handful of brands” in the US....

Last September, a ton of users found that Twitter’s image cropping algorithm seemingly had a white bias. In response, Twitter said it would give users control over how images appear on their feeds while the possible bias was being investigated — but then never delivered…until now. The company announced last night that if you post a single image on your feed, it’ll appear the same as it looked in the composer....

Britain’s fresh agreement with Germany’s BioNTech and the Bill Gates-backed Pfizer netted 30 million doses of their joint mRNA vaccine, a first for any world government. The two companies joined forces in March to fast-track development. [Read: A look at the $17 billion stock portfolio of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] French biotech company Valneva will provide 60 million doses of their “inactivated whole virus” vaccine. The UK has the option to purchase a further 40 million doses if it proves to be “safe, effective, and suitable....

Jaywick, a sleepy seaside village roughly two-hours drive from London, has a well-documented problem with unemployment. In 2011, The Guardian reported that 62 percent of the working-age population received government benefits of some kind. Since then, Jaywick has been named England’s ‘most deprived‘ area, twice. Factories in surrounding areas have continued to close in recent years, putting further stress on the local population. So, it’s no surprise that those affected by the rise of automation would meet emerging technologies with heavy skepticism....

If you want to stay hip in machine learning and especially NLP, you have to know at least a bit about Transformers. So in this post, we’ll talk about what they are, how they work, and why they’ve been so impactful. A Transformer is a type of neural network architecture. To recap, neural nets are a very effective type of model for analyzing complex data types like images, videos, audio, and text....

A research team led by the University of East Anglia discovered the dining preference by equipping the droids with acoustic monitoring devices that recorded the ‘click’ sounds made by the animals. Sperm whales produce a wide variety of these noises. They emit the sounds to communicate with their buddies and for echolocation, which helps them work out where things are by listening to the echoes. The researchers focused on the powerful and highly directional clicks the whales produce while foraging....

According to docs unsealed Monday, the US Treasury Department and the Department of Justice sanctioned and indicted Tian Yinyin and Li Jiadong, charging them with serving in an elaborate criminal network in support of the DPRK’s “cyber heist” program. In total, police say the pair, who charged a fee for their services, successfully cashed out $34 million in Chinese yuan via bank accounts. They’re also said to have bought $1....

The American transport tech company Virgin Hyperloop expects to make it happen by 2027, co-founder and Chief Executive Josh Giegel told Reuters. The company is developing tech for passenger pods that will reach a speed up to 1,200 kilometers through almost air-free vacuum tunnels using magnetic levitation. Simply put, the pods are super-fast because the lack of air and the magnetic levitation reduce friction. They will accommodate 28 passengers, and will also be used for freight....

Vantage Towers launches with over 68,000 towers across nine markets. A sizeable chunk of those come by way of a merger with Greece’s Wind Hellas and a potential 50% stake in UK’s leading telecoms infrastructure firm CTIL — the latter of which manages 14,300 towers. All that new infrastructure will become “part of the essential consolidated grid of at least two of the largest mobile operators in markets where Vodafone has already agreed nationwide active sharing agreements, including Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and Romania,” said Vodafone....

They first collected data from every qualifying session since 1983. The algorithm then compared the performances of each driver against their teammates — rather than their opponents — so racers in slower cars would have as much chance of reaching the top spots as those fighting for the title. To remove outliers from the equation, the algorithm only compared teammates who had completed five sessions together. It also gave a higher ranking to drivers who dominated their teammates or performed well against the greats....

The vulnerability, uncovered by vpnMentor, resides in AsusWRT, a web-based graphical interface that pairs with routers in order to set up private Wi-Fi networks. While the app serves as a centralized point of access for users’ internet-connected devices, including phones, tablets, laptops, and other smart devices, it also opened up users to attacks from hackers. Among other things, the researchers were able to sniff IP addresses, “users’ names” (we’ve asked vpnMentor if they meant usernames), devices’ names, usage information and IFTTT commands, longitude and latitude coordinates, as well as location info like countries and cities....

Hard skills can include learning how to do things like typing, or bookkeeping, or learning a trade. However, when you talk about hard skills these days, that usually means understanding computers and technology. And while you can delve deep into learning disciplines like SEO or graphic design, almost all of those talents lead back to one central ability nearly any tech-savvy 21st century professional needs. You need to learn how to code....

In an interesting video from the excellent Fully Charged Show, which you can watch above, you can get an overview of how the TS performs — and especially how Verge has managed to put the motorcycle’s “heart” into a single wheel. The hubless setup in the TS is both simple and complex. The electric motor is placed inside the rear tire. The central part of the system is supported by the swingarm, and the outer part rotates as if on tracks....

This all sounds ludicrous until we realize that our algorithms are increasingly being made in our own image. As we’ve learned more about our own brains, we’ve enlisted that knowledge to create algorithmic versions of ourselves. These algorithms control the speeds of driverless cars, identify targets for autonomous military drones, compute our susceptibility to commercial and political advertising, find our soulmates in online dating services, and evaluate our insurance and credit risks....

Often these are based on not much more than extrapolations by people with vested interests: the price has gone up a lot so it will keep going up. If it gets above its previous high, it must keep going up. There is also “charting” or “technical analysis” – looking at graphs and seeing patterns in them. There may be fancy terms such as “resistance levels” and “Tenkan-Sen”. There is talk about “fundamentals”....